what,is,family

篇一：What Is a Family

What Is a Family?

A family usually means a group consisting of one or two parents and their children; sometimes it also includes close relations. As a basic unit of society, family plays an essential role in social relationships. Every family has its own history and tradition, so members of a family can share different ethnic, racial, religious and cultural backgrounds together. The history of a family tells the stories about past generations and answers the question how a family built. People can find solutions from the history when they are confronted with problems. Therefore, know the history more, and know ourselves more comprehensively. The tradition of a family always displays on the family’s rules or plans. For instance, there is no TV on school nights until homework is finished, or whole family has a travel on the vacation. These rules aren’t often talked about, but they exist in every member’s mind. Everyone shoulders his or her own responsibility for the family; generally, father makes money while mother takes care of children, who always are ‘troublemakers’. Consequently, I think a family is a combination of people who are related by blood, in addition, they create their culture and obey inner rules consciously.

篇二：What is Family

What is Family?

The word FAMILY makes many of us think of warm childhood times---coming home to milk and cookies after school, stiff clothing on special occasions, getting a kiss and a hug after getting a scraped knee. But what, exactly, is a family?

For some, family is the traditional Mom, Dad and the Kids. Some include the extended Aunts, Uncles and Cousins in their definition of family. For still others, family has more to do with friends than it does with bloodlines1 . There are several ways people include individuals around them in the all- encompassing word "family."2 Ogden Nash once said: "A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold. "3

The people that make up a family can be a complex lot indeed4 . Kids are in a league of their own. They always make life interesting. Many families, though, have no children, and like it that way. Some consider their pets to be vital family members, whether the pets are labeled as children, loyal friends, or alarm system 5 .

But even childless and petless families cannot escape the antics of that one relative. That one relative that immediately comes to mind when you hear the word "eccentric ." Although they can sometimes make you crawl under the couch at family gatherings with their collage of your bad school photos, there's always something endearing about the wacky members of the family 6. These family members are usually the most fun when you share in their antics. "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton , you may as well make it dance" according to George Bernard Shaw 7. That choice to include people, no matter how nutty , can be rewarding, and easy with practice.

One of the most difficult choices we have to make is leaving our defined family, even the ones that drive us crazy. When young professionals leave home for exciting careers in exotic (or not-so-exotic) locales, the term family can take on new meanings. The family they've known since childhood scatters to the winds, and that distance can make many examine what family means to them. Friends, important to all of us, become even more essential because of their physical closeness when the traditional family is far away.

Tracy Ziemer, who grew up in Wisconsin and now lives and works in Pennsylvania, puts it this way. "Although I have a close network of friends that substitute as my 'family' while I'm away from home, I'm pretty traditional in terms of my definition of family (mom, dad, kids). We're all very close, despite the fact we don't all live near each other, and we're always writing email, calling or trying to see each other. Family, to me, is an unconditional support system of love. No matter how far away I live, they keep me grounded and remind me of who I am and where I came from." 8

In its pursuit definition, families give us a place where we belong. Families support us when we need it, and give us a swift kick in the behind when we need it. We still remember the savory smell of our favorite foods in the kitchen, and how good it felt to be a "big kid." Families are more than the people we call family members. Make their day and give them a call tonight.

What is Love?

What is this thing we call love? Is it real or imaginary?

You can't buy or sell love, or even give it away. You have no control over when you get it or when you lose it. You can't catch it from other people like a contagious illness, and doctors can't write you a prescription either to introduce or cure it 9 .

Love isn't necessary for procreation ; we can have sex without it. Animals, insects and plants don't fall in love to reproduce their species. Love isn't necessary for self-sacrifice; at times of war or emergency people give their own lives to save total strangers. Love isn't necessary for raising children; people who really care are doing a great job with children who can't be with their biological parents.

But here we find a self- induced problem. We are constantly confused by our own f lexible use of words. Making love means having sex. A loving relationship means a caring relationship. Popstars shout in all honesty "I love you!" to thousands of fans whose faces they can't see and whose names they don't know.

Philosophers speak of platonic love, and world religions preach spiritual love, but neither of these is the romantic love that captures our imaginations on Valentine's Day. This is the love that has inspired novelists, classical composers, playwrights, painters, moviemakers and popular songwriters to create enduring works that everyone relates to, generation after generation. This is the love that inspires ordinary people to battle and beat all the odds for the sake of their loved ones 10. Everyone hopes to get forever love, while how to prove the love?

I still remember that famous love story:

Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived: Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others including Love. One day it was announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all repaired their boats and left.

Love wanted to persevere until the last possible moment. When the island was almost sinking, Love decided to ask for help. Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said, "Richness, can you take me with you?" Richness answered, "No, I can't. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is no place here for you."

Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel, " Vanity , please help me!" "I can't help you Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat." Vanity answered.

Sadness was close by so Love asked for help, "Sadness, let me go with you." "Oh...Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself!"

Happiness passed by Love too, but she was so happy that she did not even hear when Love called

her!

Suddenly, there was a voice, "Come Love, I will take you." It was an elder. Love felt so blessed and overjoyed that he even forgot to ask the elder his name. When they arrived at dry land, the elder went his own way.

Love realizing how much he owed the elder and asked Knowledge, another elder, "Who helped me?" "It was Time," Knowledge answered. "Time?" asked Love. "But why did Time help me?" Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and answered, "Because, only Time is capable of understanding how great Love is."

Tasks:

Ⅰ. Choose the best answer for each of the following questions.

1. Which of the following ways people define “family” is not mentioned in the passage?

A. Family is just mom, dad and kids.

B. Family includes relatives in addition to mom, dad and kids.

C. Family includes all the bloodlines and pets.

D. Family cannot be a family if there are no kids.

2. Which of the following has the closest meaning to the underlined part in the sentence “The family they have known since childhood scatters to the wind.”

A. disappears B. is changed completely C. is thrown widely D. is separated

3. What does the sentence “Family gives us a swift kick in the behind when we need it” probably mean in this passage?

A. Family gives us support when we need.

B. Family urges us to go along ahead when we are slow in our progress.

C. Family kicks us so that we can walk quickly.

D. Family members kick us when we walk.

4. The aim of the passage “What is Family” probably is to

A. explain what family is.

B. tell people about types of definition of the word “family”.

C. remind people not to ignore their family members.

D. discuss different opinions on family.

5. Nowadays people sometimes misuse the word “love” in the following ways except

A. People say making love when they mean having sex.

B. People mention a caring relationship with a loving relationship.

C. Popstars say “I love you” to fans they don’t know.

D. People can give their own lives to save strangers.

Ⅱ. Translate the following sentences into Chinese.

1. That choice to include people, no matter how nutty, can be rewarding, and easy with practice.

2. The family they've known since childhood scatters to the winds, and that distance can make many examine what family means to them.

3. Families support us when we need it, and give us a swift kick in the behind when we need it.

4. Philosophers speak of platonic love, and world religions preach spiritual love, but neither of these is the romantic love that captures our imaginations on Valentine's Day.

5. Love felt so blessed and overjoyed that he even forgot to ask the elder his name.

篇三：What is Nuclear Family

? Family is where people get their start in life.

What is it like to live a primitive life, sleeping in a conical birch bark lodge, wearing deer skin clothing, making and using tools, traps and weapons to supply meat, and all of the other multifarious aspects of wilderness living?

Marriage was not needed by primitive man, it was not love that made marriage attractive to man, but food hunger which first attracted savage man to woman and the primitive shelter shared by her children.

The primitive family, growing out of the instinctive biologic blood bond of mother and child, was inevitably a mother-family.

Among the more advanced races, women are not so large or so strong as men

? Woman has always been the burden bearer, carrying the family property and tending the children, thus leaving the man’s hands free for fighting or hunting.

What is Nuclear Family?

Nuclear family refers to a family consisting of parents and their children. It is the most common family structure in the society, which represents most people's life. So, we also call it core family. It is quite different from large family.

This is in contrast to a single-parent family, to the larger extended family, and to a family with more than two parents. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple;[1] the nuclear family may have any number of children.

The rising divorce rate partly explains the growth of the 'beanpole' family. With almost one in two marriages ending in divorce, many adults have at least two families, each with a single child.

不断上升的离婚率是“豆竿家庭”产生的一部分原因。在大约每两段婚姻中有一?a href="http://www.zw2.cn/zhuanti/guanyuwozuowen/" target="_blank" class="keylink">我岳牖楦嬷盏那榭鱿拢芏喑赡?a href="http://www.zw2.cn/zhuanti/guanyurenzuowen/" target="_blank" class="keylink">人都至少有两个家庭，每个家里还都有一个孩子。

Life can be hard for a si

ngle parent. Responsibilities

are doubled up because you must perform the duties of being a mother and a father at the same time.

Declining numbers of children in each generation and greater life expectancy mean the family tree has become thinner and less bushy – more beanpole-like – with fewer brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles,

Therefore, I believe that extended families are becoming less important now days than they

are in the past. The division of labor in modern society separate people who are living in a big

family, social assistance system diminished the need of support from relatives, and law also

reinforced the relationship from nuclear families.

An extended family is a family that extends beyond the immediate family, consisting of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all but more grandparents and great-grandparents

living nearby or in the same household.

篇四：What is good Family Education

Writing 101

Olga Lambert

Ricky(Haoliang Lu)

What is good Family Education

Education is a kind of activity that base on cultivating talents, especially family education. Now I want to talk about the Family Education.

What is family education? --Family education is the first lesson for children, which will be remembered forever. With the competition of society is becoming more and more fierce, most of parents start to pay much more attention to family education in the education projects, they want to search better ways to educate their children. And there are many types of family education styles in this world, if we want to find better ways of family education, we should firstly have a deep understanding of that. Now I want to talk about two classical family education, Chinese family education VS American family education.

When talking about the family education, we will have to consider the parents, because they are the important executors and teachers around us.

A lot of parents in China only care about whether the children can have a promising future, a good job, a good life or not. So their major concept of education is pushing their children to study hard for entering a good higher school and famous university. If their children can admit a good college, they will feel very proud. If not, he will feel sad and ashamed of facing relatives. So they will not let children do anything except

studying. And they focus reputation in educating the children usually. Educating the children to become a useful person is their achievement, but if not, the parents will feel shameful.

In contrast, American parents pay much attention to train their children to have the ability for adapting to environmental variety and the ability of living independently but they do not force children to study, however, they will give much free space and time to children for developing the interests. So they respect kids’ willingness and allow them to choose university according to their interest, instead of taking “famous or top college” as the decision factor.

Why they are so different? – Because for Chinese parents, the children are their hope, so they think children should have a bright future. And because of the big population in China, the fierce competition occurs when children enter school. So parents want their children put all the energy on study. And the parents will do

everything they can to help their children. They want to create as good conditions as possible so that the children will not worry about anything in the future. Under this situation, children have to suffer some strict requirements from parents which could not be refused.

In the film 《Gua Sha Treatment》, there is a scene that Datong asked his son to apologize to his boss’s son when his saw his son was fighting with his boss’s son . What’s more, he slapped his son in the face when his son refused to apologize, which gave his boss a quite a shock. His boss became confused why the father would show the regret by striking his son. This scene and the boss’s confusion reflect the different

concepts between the two countries. Traditional Chinese family education emphasize kindheartedness and obedience, so we can say that Chinese parents like Datong in the film always want to model their children . On the contrary, American children have more rights of autonomy because their parents emphasis on justice and freedom in the process of family education.

Base on these, the parents mostly are the top masters in family, they give the orders and children receive orders. Children could not have any personal ideas to disagree or question parents’ orders, and even though, parents will make all decisions for their children and arrange all the things. Children only can do are mechanically obey. The parents are like the oppressor and children are like the oppressed. It indirectly makes family education become banking concept education and will make children become automations. It is like Paulo Freire said: “The banking concept of education, which serves the interests of oppression, is also necrophilic. Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power.”

But in America, the population is small and there are a lot of schools there, the governments offer everything for education, so people have no the forces that could not be accept education. Then American parents, they generally believe that children’s growth must rely on their own experiences, they will offer opportunities and hard conditions to let their children solve various problems by themselves. Through the training in the early age, children can obtain the capacity to live independently since

their childhood. They will know how to get over difficulties and achieve their purpose. Then in daily life, parents advocate democracy so that children can have the right to come up with their personal ideas and thoughts. Parents and children are equal at home. They want to use the way of communication to understand children’s feelings and direct them to solve problems. The importance is that parents hope children can learn what they need during the process of cognitive. It is like a “Problem-posing education, as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that the people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation. To that end, it enables teachers and students to become Subjects of the educational process by overcoming authoritarianism and an alienating intellectualism; it also enables people to overcome their false perception of reality. The world -- no longer something to be described with deceptive words -- becomes the object of that transforming action by men and women which results in their humanization.”

During the process of family education, different teaching way products different effect, which will influences children’s psychology and growing up.

In China, because parents always are the authority, so most of them are not good at expressing love, and appreciation for their children. Then the children sometimes will be confused about whether they have done a good job. They even criticize or punish children for their shortcomings, and the kids gradually lose confidence and have psychological shadow which could easily make them rebellious.

However, American parents give more encouragement and support to their children so as to make their children be more confident. So the children can have a happy

childhood. They can create their own future.

According to the above conditions, in my opinions, Chinese parents give too much pressure to their children, and sometimes, they will ignore their children’s interests and feelings then make decision for them. It is harmful for children’s development. And lack of correct appreciation and too much criticism make children depressive. Children will feel they are birds in cage.

“It is like a clip in the movie The Joy Luck Club: the daughter was very talented on playing piano, but she did not always play as her mother’s order, she lost her freedom. She told her mother about that but her mother still required her to do it and said: there areonly two kinds of daughters, those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!”

And American parents let children do what they want, it is good, but sometime it will make the over indulgent. That is why the teenage crime often could be happened. In radio or TV, we sometimes can get some information about that a 15-year-old boy shot his friend in the middle school.

How to make family education be a positive role? – “Mr. Tao xingzhi has said that: No love, no education.” So we can see that it’s very important for family members to establish a favorable atmosphere of study and life around children. So that means it is necessary to make a good communication between children and parents. Maybe it is difficult, such as Bell Hooks saying “It is difficult for me to talk about my parents and their impact on me because they have always felt wary, ambivalent, mistrusting of my

篇五：What is a healthy family

What is a healthy family?

As we all know, one of the most important components of a healthy society is healthy families. In my opinion, the followings contribute to a healthy family.

The first is good physical health of every member of a family. Now in an affluent society, no one is trying to eat abundantly. But still getting good nutrition is a great start. Experts and government healthy departments are doing numerous researches and offer you timely advice on how to keep your family healthy.

Good mental health leads to good physical health. All members of a family should know what makes your family happy and feel good. So loving your family is a must. Good mental health hinges on self-esteem, which would be strengthened by recognition of a group, in this case, of a family. In a healthy family, each member is respected and each of them enjoys equal rights to make decisions of their own or decisions concerning the family. One of the effective ways to build self-esteem among family members is to practice good listening skills. Listening to others shows your respect and concern, which encourages others to treat you in the same way.

Harmonious relationship is the core of a healthy family. Good family relations build self-esteem and teach children to cope in the world. Supporting each other with encouragement, empathy and help are traits of sincere family relationships. Mutual understanding and tolerance are prerequisites of a harmonious family relationship. A healthy family stresses commonness and respects differences. In order to build good relationship, family members should tolerate other members’ shortcomings and perhaps the inconveniences caused by them, or even forgive them when they hurt you.

A healthy family is likely a family, in which everyone lives a physically and mentally healthy life; where everyone enjoys mutual understanding, respect, love, hence, self-esteem.

字数作文